Costco is one of my best tools for saving money on real food. If you’re a longtime Costco shopper, you’ve probably noticed that in the last few years they’ve been making a BIG push to add more organic and natural products. While I’ve been buying real food at Costco for years, Costco shopping has started to comprise more and more of my food budget because they offer so many great real food deals.
Tips for Buying Real Food at Costco
Costco’s inventory varies quite a bit from store to store. If your Costco doesn’t sell an item that you want, you can request that they start carrying it. I haven’t ever done this myself, but I’ve heard of other people successfully getting new products into their local Costco with this method.
Costco starts carrying new products all the time, so I recommend doing a thorough walk through every few months, to make sure that you’re not missing out on any awesome new items.
In my experience, Costco real food prices are lower than all of my other real food retailers nearly all of the time. The notable exception, however, is with fresh produce. While some fresh produce is very inexpensive at Costco (such as organic potatoes and sweet potatoes), other produce items are more expensive than what I would pay at my local farmers market.
Things may be different where you live, of course. I recommend doing a price comparison with items that you’re not sure about, instead of just assuming that Costco has the best price.
Real Food Items at My Local Costco (Mountain View, CA)
Here are the real food items that I currently purchase or have purchased in the past:
- Kirkland organic virgin coconut oil
- Kirkland organic extra virgin olive oil
- Chosen Foods avocado oil
- Alexandre Kids organic pastured eggs
- Raw honey
- Kerrygold grass-fed butter
- Rumiano grass-fed cheese
- Kirkland vanilla extract (with no added sugar)
- Canned wild fish
- Frozen wild fish
- Single servings of organic guacamole
- Organic roasted nuts like cashews (I use them to make homemade cashew butter)
- Organic sprouted nuts and seeds like pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds, and watermelon seeds
- Organic dried fruits, free of preservatives and added sugars, like mangoes, figs, raisins
- Organic frozen fruit, like blueberries, strawberries, cherries, mangoes
- Organic frozen veggies, like green beans, peas, corn
- Organic fresh vegetables (I mostly buy potatoes, sweet potatoes and spinach, because I prefer to get most fresh produce from our farmers’ market, but depending on where you live, Costco fresh vegetables may be an excellent option)
- Organic fresh fruit, like grapes and bananas
- Organic, naturally fermented sauerkraut
- Organic apple cider vinegar
- Almond flour
- Organic chicken sausages (not pastured, but a good, affordable convenience food without sketchy ingredients)
- Organic ground turkey
- Organic tortilla chips
I also get some natural/green living items in bulk from Costco, like:
- Baking soda
- White vinegar
- Hydrogen peroxide
- Liquid Castile soup
- Epsom salts
- Eco-friendly dish soup
- Glass food storage containers (like these)
